Experiences of relatives in their care of schizophrenic persons: a phenomenological focus

Abstract

doi: 10.5216/ree.v12i3.6457

Current Brazilian mental health policy is based on Basaglian references which suggest the return and permanence of the mentally impaired persons to their social environment, or rather, close to their family and community. The family becomes the main subject for the materialization of current suggestions in Psychiatric Reform. Current investigation, characterized qualitatively and underpinned by Martin Heidegger's existential phenomenology, analyzed the relatives' experience when they took care of a schizophrenic member. Analysis was undertaken from October to November of 2008 with six relatives of persons with schizophrenia in their home. The following themes were established from their discourses: experience of prejudice against the schizophrenic person; understanding of the existential fact with regard the other; learning to live with the schizophrenic person; experience of a daily life through family conflicts. The above themes indicate the daily life of these people entangled in anxiety, uncertainties, weariness and disheartening, or rather, feelings associated with an incessant seeking of a re-meaning of their existence. The author feels the need to implement programs of capacitation and permanent education of health professionals so that they may give the sick persons and their families the best physical and emotional conditions to face the difficulties brought by the disease.

Descriptors: Psychiatric nursing; Family practices; Schizophrenia; Mental health.